"But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
-Barack Obama

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Off the List

I used to get emails from MoveOn.org, and was part of their mailing list, and would submit a few things every now and again. Today, I removed myself from the list. When doing so, they asked a reason, so I gave it to them:

Reason: Other. The Patraeus Ad. I thought one of the things Move On was doing was raising the level of political discourse, not lowering the bar to that of the Swift Boat Veterans/Rove folks. Now, you've given the right more ammo. We can't afford to let them change the debate over this kind of nonsense. We have to be smarter and better at this game then they are, then you go and do something like this. It is just a continuation of the divisive politics that got us into this mess in the first place. Thanks for doing what you do and working for positive change, but I don't feel like subscribing to the list any longer and giving tacit support to this sort of thing.

Yup. Never really got that involved with 'em. But this Southern Liberal will be off that list from now on.

Now, this goes against everything I think about, that we need more reasonable folks to belong to organizations in order to make a more credible change (conservative or liberal) in this country, and that is the only way to really combat the ideolouges on either side and bring back a sense of unity and normaly and consensus this nation so badly needs after the last 15 years of teeth-gnashing, but that ad pissed me off so much, I just can't stick around. I hope they come to their senses.

Patraeus doesn't deserve that kind of crap. So good for you. Of course, I'm sure you didn't expect anything different from me. But, for me, your best quality is your commitment to civil and reasonable discourse. And, although I claim to be conservative, I'm pretty damn near as liberal as you.

Not only does MoveOn.org hurt the liberal cause, they create greater bitterness and anger that makes it ever harder to reach mutual agreement between different groups which, in turn, greatly harms our country.